Women in Latin American Studies: Reshaping the Boundaries I » "i . I ii vj SEMINAR ON THE ACQUISITION OF LATIN AMERICAN LIBRARY MATERIALS v* t^r XLIX *> I I * 1 AROLD B. LEB IfBRAltV 1HAM YOUNG UNIVERSf PROVO.UTAH ! Women in Latin American Studies Reshaping the Boundaries SALALM Secretariat Latin American Library Tulane University Women in Latin American Studies: Reshaping the Boundaries Papers of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the SEMINAR ON THE ACQUISITION OF LATIN AMERICAN LIBRARY MATERIALS Ann Arbor, Michigan June 5-8, 2004 Angela Carreño Editor SALALM Secretariat Latin American Library Tulane University JLU tí. Lhh LihJKAKY M YOUNG UNTVERSn PROVO, UTAH ISBN: 0-917617-76-2 Copyright © 2007 by SALALM, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 1 Contents Preface vii Keynote Address 1. Empowering Women: Towards an Intellectual History of a Book Project Carmen Diana Deere 3 Mapping Recent Progress and Change 2. The Role of NGOs in the Quest for the Empowerment of Women and Gender Equality in Trinidad and Tobago Allison C. B. Do Iland 15 3. Redefinition of Masculinity and Femininity in Indo-Trinidadian Society Yacoob Hosein 24 4. Mayan Women's Post-Peace Accords Participation in Guatemalan Elections Karen Lindvall-Larson 36 5. Taller de lectura y escritura cárcel de mujeres Carolina Espinosa Arango 46 Approaches to Collection Management: An Examination of Issues 6. Tendencias en el manejo de la adquisición y el acceso a los recursos de información bibliográfica en bibliotecas mexicanas Eduardo Ruvalcaba Burgoa 57 7. Indigenous Film and Video in Latin America: Starting Points for Collection Development Daisy Domínguez 8 8. Preserving The Standard: A LAMP Project Irene L. Münster 109 Covering an Interdisciplinary Field: Monitoring Trends and Collecting Strategies 9. Latin American Women's Studies in HAPI Barbara G. Valk 117 . vi Contents 10. Systematic Program Review and a Collection Development Triangle—Women's Studies, International Studies, and Latin American Studies: A Case Study Donna Canevari de Paredes 125 The Bibliographic Record: Authors and Patriots 1 1 An Iron Mother for a Bronze Titan: A Bibliography of Mariana Grajales de Maceo Rafael E. Tarrago 141 12. Bolivian Women Short Story Writers Nelly S. González 154 From Quipu to Yahoo!: Teaching Information Literacy for Latin American Studies 13. Creating the Information Literate Researcher Sean Patrick KnowIton 1 73 14. Moving Beyond the One-Shot: Designing a Research Methodology Course Anne C. Barnhart 179 Contributors 1 85 Conference Program 1 87 Preface I chose "Women in Latin American Studies: Reshaping the Boundaries" for the theme of the 49th SALALM conference, because I was interested in explor- ing changing boundaries in women's studies and Latin American studies and how the interaction of evolving disciplinary perspectives pushes librarians to reconceptualize information needs or identify new needs. Women's studies is important in and of itself, but it also presents a good example of an interdisci- plinary field in which topical inquiry overlaps with Latin American studies. I have certainly met with faculty who do not necessarily have a background in Latin American studies but express an interest in exploring an international perspective on an issue related to women's studies. During the past decade there has been a trend to internationalize women's studies and examine the significance of gender in the study of international issues and global processes. Two questions dominate: how do we think and teach comparatively and rela- tionally about women's lives and gender arrangements in locations around the world? And how do we bring international perspectives to bear on women's lives and gender arrangements in any given location? Latin Americanist librar- ians have an important role to play in the identification, provision, and preser- vation of resources as well as the provision of research services that meet the needs of non-Latin Americanist scholars with an interdisciplinary focus that overlaps with Latin American studies. In the past decade there was also a move among federal as well as private funding agencies within the United States to reexamine the effectiveness of tra- ditional area studies as the primary strategy for doing international scholarship. Structural shifts occurred in funding priorities asserting the need to organize scholarship along globalized lines with an emphasis on transnational themes and problems. My concern has been that the prioritization of the international context over the local potentially weakens in-depth knowledge of the cultures, histories, literatures, and languages of a single area or country. I consider the Latin American collections we have built important bastions upholding the pos- sibility and importance of in-depth knowledge of a region. This work must continue and yet respond to changing needs. The conference papers reflected a broad range of concerns including the changing material and economic circumstances that affect women's experi- ences in work and family life; questions of identity, cultural representation, and Vll viii Preface cultural production; issues of women's rights and political representation in relation to the state; and the historical and current forms of women's resistance and activism. As is traditional at SALALM conferences, I sought a balance between scholarly and bibliographic presentations and tried to provide the right mix of thematic and functional panels. The highlight was the keynote address given by Carmen Diana Deere, at the time a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and soon-to-be director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Professor Deere offered a stimu- lating account of the decade of research and writing that resulted in her and Magdalena Leon's work titled Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America, a classic on the question of gender and property in Latin America. Her discussion of the research trajectory and concrete examples of research strategies presented a fascinating example of research that engages in multidisciplinary and multicountry analysis. These proceedings are the result of the work of the conference partici- pants, panel chairs, and members of SALALM involved in the planning of the meeting. All richly deserve my thanks. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor was an exemplary host institution. The University Library and the Latin American and Carribbean Studies made us feel very welcome. The SALALM Libreros were an integral part of the conference. I am grateful for their continued participation and support. Nerea Llamas, the chair of the Local Arrangements Committee, and her hardworking team made the conference a delightful experience. Laura Gutierrez- Witt and Jane Garner gave invaluable assistance. Mark L. Grover and Shannon Thurlow helped in editing these papers. To all, I give my thanks. Angela Carreño Keynote Address 1. Empowering Women: Towards an Intellectual History of a Book Project Carmen Diana Deere Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America was the most 1 ambitious research project that Magdalena León and I ever embarked upon, 2 and we have a history of taking on ambitious projects. It was bold in terms of the range of issues covered, in its interdisciplinarity and comparative scope, and with respect to its political agenda. But except for the latter, these were unintended consequences of our collaboration. These are the themes that I will develop in my address today. Empowering Women was largely motivated by a challenge posed to us by Indian economist Bina Agarwal. She had just completed a major tome on gen- der and land rights in South Asia3 and was organizing a panel on this topic for the NGO Forum at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The thought of writing an overview paper on Latin America on this issue initially seemed daunting—particularly with a lead time of only six months—but I agreed to survey the available literature. In my library search I found that relatively little research had been carried out on gender and land rights in Latin America since Magdalena Leon's and my own research on the agrarian reform processes of the 1970s and 1980s. Moreover, relatively little attention had yet been given to the gendered implications of the neoliberal counterreforms in agriculture. I was unable to attend the Beijing conference, so I asked Magdalena, who was to attend the conference as a member of the official Colombian delegation, to present my paper at the panel hosted by the International Association for Feminist Economics at the NGO Forum. At the Beijing conference, Magdalena was struck by how issues of property and gender inequality received relatively little attention in the NGO Forum compared with other critical feminist issues such as representation, diversity, citizenship, and empowerment. However, in the governmental debates over the Beijing Platform for Action, different views of equality versus equity in the inheritance rights of men and women almost ended up aborting the entire consensus of the Beijing platform—due to the contention of Muslim countries that a daughter's smaller inheritance share (half of that of brother's) was equitable, since men must support their female kin. The Beijing conference convinced us that the issue of women's land rights was worth pursuing in more depth and, moreover, that we should do so as a collaborative project. 4 Carmen Diana Deere Two interrelated questions motivated our initial research: the impact of the neoliberal counterreforms on women's land rights and whether the growth and consolidation of the feminist and women's movement in Latin America had made a difference in the new agrarian legislation being adopted in the region. By the early 1 990s the international financial agencies had come to realize that "getting prices right" was insufficient; they also had to get "institutions right" if the neoliberal model based on market-oriented reforms was to succeed.